The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have previously been conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Typically, data is sent between computing devices across a communications network in packets. The packets may be generated according to a variety of protocols such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), or the like. A network appliance in a network can be connected to many other computing devices via many different network paths. Furthermore, the network paths may traverse multiple communication networks.
When selecting a network path for a particular data traffic flow, a network appliance may first need to classify the flow to determine which network path is appropriate or optimal for the flow. The network path selection needs to be made on a first packet for a flow. However, often times a first packet for a flow is merely a packet for establishing a connection and may only have limited information, such as only header information. Thus mechanisms are needed for classifying a traffic flow based on the limited information available in a first packet for a flow.